robkelk Wrote:So, yes, the IST world's China has thousands of metahumans - but they're relatively weak metahumans. While force of numbers is on their side, sheer power is more likely to be found on the other side of the battle lines.
This is my "Chinese Method"
The way the Chinese “manufacture” metahumans is fairly straight-forward. Out of one-million test subjects, just over 250,000 survive to become metahumans. Current Chinese infrastructure allows for 40,000 subjects to be given the treatment every month (or 10,000 a week). 2,500 metahumans enter their accelerated basic training every week.
In the first stage, the subject is given a gene therapy treatment to splice in metahuman genes. This is the most dangerous phase as 2/3rds of the recipients do not survive it. The subject makes a HT-1 roll with failure resulting in death within a week. On a critical failure, death is instantaneous.
After the week, survivors are given the second stage, which is a tailored cocktail of drugs and hormones determined to bring out general types of metahuman responses. Not quite three-quarters of those reaching the second stage survive. The subject makes a HT+2 roll with failure resulting in death within hours of beginning the second stage. On a critical failure, the death is accompanied by a runaway metahuman response.
It takes a further week to recover from the cocktail. After that, the metahuman genes and powers have taken hold. The alteration to the subject’s intelligence mixed with the cocktail has left them in a mentally plastic, suggestive state, similar to a child, for about two months. The next two months involve military and metahuman basic training and indoctrination. After the two months, the subject’s mind “matures.”
The subject gains a +1 to IQ [20] and 100 points of super powers, plus 100 points times the margin of success of the HT roll for the first stage. On a critical success of the first stage, the character gains a full 1,000 character points of super powers.
If applied to a metahuman with existing powers, they do have to make the HT rolls, however, even if both are successful, no additional abilities are gained. It cannot improve or increase power levels on existing metahumans.